Page 29

It’s afternoon the next day when I finally watch him leave Morvaine Manor, the home base for The Order, which Damiano, in addition to being a complete hack without any artistic vision, is the current president of.

I make sure no one’s around or paying attention before I slip in the back door of the ultra-cool, very haunted-house-looking gothic old manor. I make my way upstairs, ducking into a common room to avoid a couple of students before I finally get to Damiano’s room.

…I may or may not know it's his because I camped out in the trees outside Morvaine last night after I got back to campus, and I saw him reading at his desk.

Inside, I shut the door behind me and survey his little domain.

Good lord.

I might be crazy, but Damiano’s room is psychotically neat. There’s not a single thing amiss. Not one errant sock on the floor. Every book on the shelves is perfectly lined up. For fuck’s sake, the spines are in color order.

“Psycho,” I mutter to myself, shaking my head as I walk across the room. At his desk, I glance down at his row of neatly organized pens that aren’t even one freaking sixteenth of an inch off from one another.

With a smirk, I whack them onto the floor. Fuck, that felt good.

My grin widens as I turn to the rest of the room, surveying the surgical precision with which everything in here is organized.

The framed photos on the wall. The clothes neatly folded in his drawers or hanging perfectly straight in in his closet. I run a hand over his bed, which looks like it was tucked in by a fucking cyborg.

I punch one of the freshly fluffed up pillows, grinning at the dent I leave in it. I punch the one next to it, then pick it up and throw it clear across the room, where it knocks a book and a pair of polished sunglasses off a little shelf by the door.

Oopsie.

I knock the lamp off the bedside table.

A couple of framed pictures on the wall are next.

My lips curl into a dark grin as the adrenaline kicks in.

Oh, it’s go time.

Five minutes later, Damiano’s room is a fucking disaster. His clothes are strewn everywhere. His desk is a shambles. There’s not a single book left on a single shelf. I even pull down his duvet and leave his shoes on top of the sheets, because fuck you Lamiano, that’s why.

I smile widely as I survey my carnage.

Almost done…

I spy with my little eye a copy of yesterday’s edition of the Hawthorne Herald—previously neatly folded at the side of his desk, but now scrunched up and half-buried in a pile of what were once Damiano’s immaculately organized school notes…but from two years ago, because I can't even.

Next to it I spot a red marker, and a grin lifts the corners of my lips.

“STEALING CRIMINAL EVIDENCE IS A NO-NO…” I scrawl across the front page of the newspaper before I find a thumbtack in the wreckage strewn across his floor and tack my love-note to the wall above his now-lopsided headboard.

With a satisfied sigh, I plop down on his bed and lie across it, fingers laced behind my head.

I should probably get the hell out of here. But I also like being in here. One, it’s fun to imagine him having a stroke when he sees the state of his room. But also?

My face heats.

Not gonna lie, there’s something kinda sneaky-hot about lying in the bed of the man you’ve been furiously masturbating to for the last four days.

Heat pools between my thighs. I chew on my lip as I glance around, trying to imagine him in this space.

Sleeping.

Getting dressed.

Showering.